November 30, 2007

Sudan Crowds Demand Death Of 'Teddy Bear' Teacher (Updated)

Not finding the sentencing of a teacher to prison for 15 days and subsequent deportation over the most ridiculous of reasons sufficient enough, hundreds of people (the al-Guardian puts the number at 10,000), stirred up by a Muslim cleric, marched through Khartoum after Friday prayers denouncing what they termed a "lenient verdict" against the British teacher for insulting Islam - demanding for her to be shot. All over allowing her students to name a teddy bear, Mohammed:

Sheikh Abdul Jalil Karuri, a leading cleric, whipped up a crowd attending at the city's Martyr's Mosque by telling them Gillian Gibbons had deliberately named her class's teddy bear Mohammed "with the intention of insulting Islam."

Later the protestors joined other worshippers to congregate in the centre of the capital.

"Those who insult the Prophet of Islam should be punished with bullets," the crowd shouted after Gibbons, 54, was jailed for 15 days on charges stemming from naming a teddy bear Mohammed.

Pray tell, is there anyway to insult Islam more than wanting a teacher killed over allowing her 7 year-old Muslim students to chose the name Muhammed - themselves? Bad enough that the 54 year-old teacher is now behind bars in an overcrowded Sudanese prison.

As I've posited in a previous post, "When is enough of something, enough? Frankly, I've heard enough about Muhammad controversies and Muslim sensitivities. Are we in the 21st century or the Middle Ages?" And how is it possible for anyone to offend the religion of Islam more so than the adherents themselves offend the very word - religion?

Also, borrowing from a link in my previous post - how is it that "If you have a teddy bear named Muhammad you are insulting islam.... but if you are a guy whose actual name is Muhammad, and you strap on a suicide vest and commit mass murder, then you are glorifying islam"?

I submit that it just isn't possible to insult Islam more than the Islamists themselves insult both Islam and the very concept of the word religion itself.